What is the Diet Self-Study software?

If you have taught a nutrition class at the college level, you are probably familiar with the traditional diet analysis software used in these courses---free software handed out by textbook publishers, or expensive and complex software that is difficult for beginning students to use. Both of these will perform competent diet analysis for your students, but neither type provides the student with any background or interpretation, and neither engages the student in basic nutrient-related calculations.

The Diet Self-Study is interactive diet analysis software that was written specifically for use by beginning students. It not only performs diet analysis, but it helps you teach students about nutrition by helping them understand what their analysis results mean.

What makes DSS unique?

Here's what DSS has that most ordinary diet analysis software doesn't have:

  • DSS was written by a nutrition instructor specifically for use as a student diet analysis assignment for nutrition/health science classes. This is not a re-hash or spinoff of a standard diet analysis program for dieticians. It is original software designed for students to use.
  • It uses a simple step-wise format---no computer experience necessary. Checkmarks indicate which steps have been completed. The full printout is not allowed until all steps have been completed.
  • It covers interactive backgound concepts: DSS provides onscreen explanations of total energy needs and protein needs. Students are required to correctly perform their personal energy/protein calculations on the spot. A pop-up calculator is provided.
  • It provides interactive interpretation of results: following diet analysis DSS behaves like a combined, nutritionist/nutrition teacher. It
  • guides the student, via explanation and the student's own diet list, in an exploration of her/his sources of energy (CARB, FAT, PROTEIN). DSS also requests onscreen calculation of percentage of total Kcals from fat and carbohydrate.
  • reviews intake of each macronutrient in more detail, reviews Dietary Guideline advice, and requests appropriate increases/decreases in intake to meet Dietary Guideline values.
  • reviews issues regarding sat'd fat/cholesterol, then examines intake of saturated fat and dietary fiber in relation to the Dietary Guidelines values, and requests adjustments in the diet to meet these values.
  • reviews vitamin/mineral intake in relation to RDA, and requests dietary additions if necessary.
  • flags low caloric intake, overly-fortified breakfast cereals, alcohol consumption during pregnancy, and other circumstances that you would point out if you were helping your student with his/her analysis.
  • keeps students alert by providing pop-quiz questions here and there throughout the program.
  • DSS also provides easy scrolling/indexed access to its entire 1700+ foods database. To encourage exploration of food composition, DSS offers instant views of macronutrient content or fat statistics for any highlighted food, with just a single key-press.
  • DSS allows any number of foods per day, and any number of days in the diet analysis. It will analyse either the current day, or average all the days together. Diets/personal info may be saved to disk at any stage and later recalled.
  • DSS does not treat carbohydrate and fat as if they were RDA nutrients with a certain intake necessary each day. Instead, DSS evaluates diets on the basis of the Dietary Guidelines --- percent of total Calories provided by various fats and carbs, regardless of the Calorie intake.
  • DSS is smart: for example, when total calories are very low but percent of fat calories is high, DSS advises eating more carbohydrate/protein rather than cutting back fat.
  • Finally, DSS does not treat estimated energy needs as a "must meet" quantity. Instead, DSS builds healthy skepticism by pointing out the inherent inaccuracies in any diet analysis, variation in Calorie intake, and variation in energy needs.

    • The Diet Self-Study is a program that talks nutrition to your students and reinforces what you've taught them in the classroom.

    It is also a program that students have fun with, and that generates enthusiasm about examining dietary intake and food composition.

    And, if you're lucky enough to have a computer projection screen in your lecture hall or classroom, DSS's database features are a great asset when discussing food composition in class.

     

    The foods database

    DSS uses a subset (~1700 foods and 25 nutrients) of the USDA Survey Nutrient Database. The Survey database includes prepared foods not present in the USDA Standard Data Set, and it has no "missing" nutrient values.

    The Foods Database screen provides features that make food composition fun and interesting. See instant fat and macronutrient statistics by pressing the FatStat and MacroStat keys.

     

    Non-interactive use

    In addition to its teaching/interactive mode, DSS also provides a rapid analysis/printout option for screening foods and diets. In fact, you may find yourself never using the big software packages for basic diet analysis or food value look-ups, because it's so much easier to do with DSS.

     

    Teachers benefit, too

    DSS was designed and written by a Ph.D. nutrition instructor. From the start, DSS was designed not only to engage students, but to reduce the teacher's workload by ensuring that DSS checks calculations and checks completion of each section.

    Since DSS teaches basic concepts, and doesn't allow the full printout until the student has performed calculations correctly and looked in detail at his/her diet, your grading time is minimal---approximately 3-10 minutes per student. This eases your workload, and helps you provide rapid turn-around and rapid feedback to students.

    It is recommended that you assign a Summary Page (or two) for students to fill out while referring to their printouts. This helps reinforce the connection between the printout and what the student did while using the program (all student-entered data is included in the printout). Sample summary pages are included with the software (see below).

     

    Documentation

    DSS comes with an amply illustrated User's Guide (which isn't very often needed!). Also provided is an example of a handout for a college-level diet analysis assignment. This handout includes a set of Condensed Instructions for DSS, as well as sample Summary Pages for students to fill out after they have completed the computer program.

     

    Versions of Diet Self-Study

    DSS is available in both network and non-network versions.

    The network version requires the student to provide a diskette on which the diet list and personal data are stored (a diskette is also recommended for the non-network version to allow saving/resumption of work). A list of allowable diskette drives may be pre-set by the network manager.

    Because students often want to take DSS home with them, there is also a DSS*Lite version of DSS which can be sold to students through the bookstore for about $10-12.

     

    Hardware needed

    The Diet Self-Study software is a DOS program that runs on any IBM-compatible computer with at least 640K RAM, DOS 3.x or higher, and a hard disk with ~1 Meg of space available. DSS can print to any dot-matrix, HP-compatible laser, or inkjet printer. There is not a Macintosh version.

    DSS runs in a DOS window on Win3.1, Win95/98, and NT.

     

    It's not free, but...

    We know that many schools and academic departments have very tight budgets, and DSS is priced accordingly. A site license for either the network or non-network version is $249 (CA institutions add 7.25% sales tax), and entitles you to use DSS on as many computers as your department's computer facility can provide.

    Please note that the standard version of DSS may not be distributed to students, but the DSS*Lite version may be sold through the Campus Bookstore. See DSS*Lite section for details.

     

    FAX or call us for further information at (510) 848-5903, or order (P.O.'s welcome) from:

    WholeGrain Software
    1427 Bancroft Way
    Berkeley, CA 94702
    USA

    The DSS Demo--we'll send it to you. Or, download it to your computer now.

    We have a free DEMO DISK of the entire DSS program (but w/abbreviated foods database) that we'd be happy to send you. Just ask. Or, download it...see below:

    1. Please read before downloading the demo

    2. Then, click here to download the demo (245K) to your computer.

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